Title: Parasitism
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,586
Warnings: Mirrorverse fic, part of the Symbiosis Trilogy (see also Mutualism and Commensalism) which is the prequel to Infection
Summary: The Enterprise will be his.

+++

He drags his ass to East Bum-Fuck, Iowa to meet a very special lady.

The ISS Enterprise will be set to sail in three years, a brutal beauty that will serve as the flagship of the empire.

And Pike has to have her.

"Assemble the best crew and the Enterprise will be yours," Barnett had said. The man had gotten far too comfortable in his position as an admiral to remember how impossible having the best crew was. The best were the most aggressive, the most competitive, and it was either kill or be killed to stay on top.

Pike walks her mostly finished corridors, running a hand along the walls in a moment of sentimentality.

He'll assemble the best crew, figure out a way to arrange that at least the most important individuals stay alive.

The Enterprise will be his.

+

Pike's about to send all of the cadets to the agony booths as he writes up the report, pausing to ask the bartender who the boy passed out on the floor is, the one who instigated this whole mess. He keeps the surprise from showing on his face, looking up the kid's file instead and becoming very impressed with what he reads. He sits at one of the tables, perusing his PADD while waiting for the kid to regain consciousness.

He does so slowly, incredulously, like he can't believe he's still alive. "You're the whistle-y guy," he says, sounding more sober than Pike would've guessed he had any right to.

"Captain Pike," he replies, waiting for the kid to pull himself into the seat across from him. "I've been reading up on you since you passed out, Kirk. It's an impressive record you're building for yourself. Like you're living with a death wish." He watches Kirk pull some tissues out of his jacket pocket and jam them up his nose. "I wrote my dissertation on your father."

Kirk snorts at that. "Were you being punished?"

"I thought there was something interesting about a man who would sacrifice himself for his family."

This time Kirk does laugh outright, a dark chuckle as he waves at the bartender to bring him a drink. "Sacrifice… My father was a coward. Captains don't die with the ship, they order others to do it for them. Starfleet had us quarantined like it was a communicable disease."

Pike knows how the Kirk family was sent to Riverside when they returned to Earth, how Winona Kirk had to make some very unpleasant deals with Starfleet before they'd clear her family's name and let her back in space. "So you can stick around here, getting into bar fights to prove you aren't weak until you get yourself killed, or you can enlist."

Kirk's beer arrives, and the expression on his face looks like he's contemplating breaking the glass to slit Pike's throat. "You have a really fucked up sense of humor, Captain Pike."

"In four years you'd be done at the Imperial Academy, a lieutenant on a ship anywhere that isn't here. After another four years, you'll have your own command." Pike can see that Kirk's gaze is distant, blank, not even registering what he's saying. "The shuttle's leaving at 0800. Kirk, you can prove that you're better than your father by taking on Klingons in the black instead of hicks in the middle of nowhere." He stands, giving up. "I need to go check on those morons you made friends with earlier." Pike pauses halfway to the door, not even turning around to say, "You're just proving Starfleet right by wasting away here."

Pike takes the car he borrowed from the shipyard's motor pool down to the clinic, trying not to think of Kirk's aptitude tests and how dangerous Kirk would be in the empire given the right amount of power. The admiralty would be terrified yet chomping at the bit to have him enlist, but short of physically dragging Kirk to San Francisco, there's nothing Pike can do. Starfleet is, unfortunately, still completely voluntary.

Entering the clinic, Pike sees the four meathead cadets waiting and already patched up, sitting in a row along one wall as they look warily at a man sitting by himself opposite them. "Where's the doctor?" Pike asks, wanting to pay for the clinic's services as Starfleet doesn't leave unanswered debts ever.

"That'd be me," says the man sitting by himself, scratching at the stubble on his jaw and not even motioning to stand. "It's McCoy." He hands over a PADD that lists all the injuries the cadets were treated for and subsequent cost.

Pike reads through this list, seeing that Davis's arm is wrapped but there's no corresponding injury on the list. "What happened to his arm?"

Now McCoy stands, not shirking from eye contact, as he motions vaguely at Davis. "That one didn't want a hypospray for the pain and it required a bit of coercion to get him to take it."

Pike pretends he's still reading over the treatment list when he's really switched over to look up the doctor. The man, he quickly finds out, is a brilliant surgeon, not even thirty yet and has already developed groundbreaking techniques. McCoy almost lost his license after his father died, but there was no official proof that McCoy had killed him, so they let him off and keep his job. His wife hadn't seemed so lenient as she rather publicly took him for everything he had and threw him out, which seemed to be why McCoy was in Riverside instead of a trauma one hospital in a city.

Losing Kirk won't feel so bad if he can get McCoy.

He feels like the cat that ate the canary when both of them are on the shuttle before takeoff, and as Pike watches them talk on the video surveillance feeds from the cockpit, the Enterprise feels like his already.

+

Kirk's a loose cannon.

His life at the Imperial Academy seems not much removed from his one back in Riverside. He goes out and gets into fights, but here the ones he's fighting are striving for dominance just as he is, so instead of fighting strangers who will keep their distance afterwards, Kirk is making enemies. Very dangerous enemies.

Even Pike can recognize that if it weren't for McCoy, Kirk would probably be dead ten times over by now.

The pair of them are certainly the best in their respective fields. It's a good thing they are on completely different tracks as it keeps them from killing each other as competition. They make quite the scary pair, and Pike has noticed that cadets that incite attacks on Kirk have ended up dead at McCoy's hands and vice versa. They have their own styles, too. Kirk kills like a fat cat playing with a mouse while McCoy uses his medical knowledge to be quick and efficient though not always painless.

While McCoy seems to be taking care of any individuals who go out of their way to harm Kirk, he doesn't do anything about Kirk's desire to go out and get into fights. This is the behavior Pike needs to get Kirk to stop. He's put too much time into Kirk for the kid to just throw his life away.

The admiralty hadn't been happy when they'd found out Pike had recruited George Kirk's son. Pike had spent a week in the agony booth, getting taken out when he was on the brink of death for long enough to recover and get thrown back in.

"Kirk is your responsibility," Barnett had said to Pike afterwards, when he was recovering at Starfleet Medical from excessive nerve and muscle damage. "Anything good Kirk does for the empire will be because of us, but anything detrimental will be solely on you."

He knew he needed to get at Kirk through McCoy, but it needed to be in a way that wouldn't get him killed by either of them, and something that McCoy would actually go along with. Pike could feel a plan forming, working itself out and falling together in the back of his mind, and it was only a matter of time before it would make itself known.

+

The distress call from Vulcan is a welcome relief.

Pike remembers the threat Barnett had made three years ago. He doesn't know if Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru counts as behavior detrimental to the empire, but at least they aren't around long enough to find out.

He doesn't bother to cover his surprise and outrage, then, when Kirk comes running onto the bridge, McCoy on his heels. McCoy doesn't bother to explain his actions, as undoubtedly it's his fault Kirk is aboard when he shouldn't be, and Pike wonders if there's something more going on between the two than he knew about. He'll have to watch them more closely, possibly set up surveillance in their respective barracks as it's likely either of them will catch onto and kill anyone he pays to tail them without even blinking.

Pike's almost disappointed that Kirk seems to know what he's talking about. He'd been all set to have them both thrown in agony booths for insurrection.

"We'll discuss this later, McCoy," Pike says, focusing on the countdown the helmsman is giving until they drop out of warp.

"Yes, sir," McCoy responds through clenched teeth, his tone expressing his understanding that there won't be an actual discussion taking place.

+

Captain Pike never thought he'd be grateful to Jim Kirk for anything, but that week he'd spent in the agony booth after enlisting Kirk had made his body more than able to tolerate anything these Romulans could throw at him.

Nero, who claimed he didn't speak for the Romulan Empire, was getting annoyed. Dealing with Romulans had always been so much easier than Vulcans, in Pike's mind. The way they displayed their emotions, you could see the anger long before the attack, and it almost made everything less fun. Nero lashes out at the table Pike is strapped down to, the movement causing waves of electricity course through the bindings, normally activated by Pike's movements but it seems like enough force can fool them to think he has moved.

The Romulan captain's face suddenly turns stoic, and only now does Pike feel like they're finally getting down to business. "In my time," Nero begins, his Standard rough, unpracticed. "The Terran Empire has fallen long ago. The Romulan Empire invaded your planet, took it over, and turned all of your kind into slaves." He sneers. "You have your first officer to thank for that. Let that be a lesson to you, Christopher, than the last one you ever want to leave in charge is a Vulcan. But don't be too angry with him, he enslaved his kind, too."

"You're delusional," Pike says, as there's clearly no other explanation for it.

Nero hits the table again, harder this time, and stronger waves of energy jolt through Pike's body, causing his muscles to involuntarily clench too tightly. "Your pet Vulcan caused the downfall of the Terran Empire!" Nero's yelling in Pike's face, so close that Pike can't make out what the other Romulans around them are doing. "He couldn't just accept defeat, though. We made the Vulcans work to save Romulus and instead they destroyed it. Vulcans and your kind have done nothing but get in the way, cause problems for every other sentient species in the galaxy. I've already destroyed Vulcan. Your planet, Christopher, is next."

Nero pulls out of Pike's field of vision, and he sees one of the other Romulans handing something over to Nero. It's moving, making shrill chirping noises, and Pike, schooled in the ways of interrogation, automatically recognizes the Centaurian slug. "Good, you recognize my friend here. The three of us are going to have a little chat, and you're going to tell me everything I need to know."

+

When the Enterprise finally gets back to Earth, Pike consults four surgeons to make sure he wasn't wheelchair-bound because of McCoy's hand. They all seem to get raging hard-ons over McCoy's work, and apparently, without McCoy, he wouldn't be able to plan on walking again at all. That's something Pike owes him, now, and Pike doesn't like being in peoples' pockets. He didn't get to be a captain in the Imperial Starfleet by handing out favors. Pike made Kirk's life McCoy's responsibility, not his own, and while it wasn't necessary for the doctor to keep him drugged to the gills for most of the flight back, Pike still had his life.

During all the debriefings, every time he sees or passes McCoy, Pike expects the man to ask him for a favor, to get him to pay up, alter his and Kirk's files so their lives aren't codependent anymore, but instead he smirks, like he's figured something out that Pike hasn't, and doesn't ask of anything.

The admirals aren't nearly so lenient.

"We're giving Kirk the Enterprise," Barnett tells him. "Those Romulans would have destroyed Earth like they did Vulcan if it weren't for him. He'll serve as a great symbol of the empire - a formidable leader born from the ashes of his coward father. What else does the empire stand for if it isn't rising above those who are weaker?"

Pike's seeing red. He didn't stick around the academy for all those years, maneuver Starfleet's inner workings to build up that crew, for his ship to be handed to someone else, especially not someone who the admiralty had punished him for recruiting to begin with. He wasn't going to end up on some second or even third rate ship because, with half the fleet destroyed, what else was left?

"Where does that leave me?" he asked, schooling his voice into a cold calm.

"Some want to make you an admiral for your testimony about what the Romulans told you. This information that the empire is going to fall is nothing we can ignore. Those that don't want to see you promoted, though, want you executed for giving the security codes."

"So which side are you on?"

Barnett's grin is all teeth, like a shark's. "If they want you dead, I won't hesitate to do it myself."

Pike's progressed onto a cane by the time they decide that they'd rather keep Pike around, but he stays in the wheelchair in public, liking the assumption made by those around him when he's in it. They want him politicking, keeping the imminent fall of the Terran Empire from all but the government, strategizing to make Starfleet stronger.

He's there when Kirk is awarded captaincy of the Enterprise, and for formality's sake Pike has to be there to hand over his ship, but it surprisingly feel less like they're twisting the knife in his gut than he thought it would.

They'll find out sooner or later what he's working on, and all of the empire will be in Pike's debt when the Romulans are fought off and Earth isn't enslaved.

+

Pike moves to Paris. He can't stand San Francisco anymore and space has become less interesting now that he knows planets can be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

He's stopped using the wheelchair altogether but keeps the cane, even though he doesn't really need it. He's had an agonizer built into it, his hand constantly resting on the controls. It came in handy the first time he met the emperor face-to-face and an assassin came in, Pike neatly disabling the man and killing him efficiently. The man's eyes widened in surprise just before he died. Those in the room thought it was because he hadn't expected Pike to be able to react like that. Pike was the only one still alive who knew that it was because he himself had hired the assassin.

The emperor puts Pike in control of the Imperial Starfleet, and Pike sends Barnett out onto a colony in deep space, on an unstable moon where they watch the border of Romulan space.

He doesn't change anything about the Enterprise's mission, though. What would be the point in intentionally putting Kirk in danger after all that effort to keep him alive?

+

At the end of the Enterprise's first five year tour, Pike goes and visits her in space dock, before the repairs, maintenance, and retrofitting begin.

Her once pristine disk is now marred with burns from phaser fire, and Pike can smell the blood in the air even if he can't see it in the floors and walls.

Pike's the only one on the ship at all, so he lets himself, as he once had, run his hand along her wall as he walks.

Before her beauty was one of strength, power. Now she's been damaged by battle and it makes her look even stronger, fiercer, like the amazons of old who would cut off a breast to better their aim with a bow.

His goal now isn't to make the Enterprise his anymore, but to make sure she's never the Romulan's.

+

He beams back to Paris well passed sunset, holding his cane casually and smirking as those on the streets see his uniform and instantly avert their gazes.

Pike arrives at his house, entering the security code to get through the front door. He checks just to make sure he wasn't followed before entering, rearming the system behind him.

A movement of shadow in his peripheral vision is all the warning Pike has before he lashes out with his cane, seeing the electricity jolting, Kirk's damned eyes dancing in the darkness as he doesn't even so much as react to the agonizer with more than a smirk. Pike knows why when he feels the familiar pressure of a hypospray at his neck, followed by darkness.

He comes to tied up in his dining room chair, the table set up, and there's the smell of food coming from his kitchen. Pike doesn't feign unconsciousness when Kirk enters from the other room, eating a bread roll that probably came from the place down the street. He takes a good, long look at Kirk instead, instantly spotting the angry, red scar that runs across Kirk's neck from just under his jawline to his ear.

"Bones!" Kirk calls as he stuffs the last bit of bread into his mouth and spins one of the chairs around to straddle it backwards. "He's awake!"

"See you're still holding up your end of the contract," Pike says when McCoy comes in from wherever Kirk had just been. He's playing with fire, he knows, but they started it when they broke into his goddamn house. He's going to have a word with the security company if the two of them don't leave Pike bleeding out on the floor. Pike's at least hoping, though, that mentioning the clause he put in Kirk's and McCoy's files would throw them off, have Kirk demand to know what he's talking about, but the captain's smirk just widens. "Of course you know," he says, disbelieving that McCoy would let Kirk hold that power over him.

"Was that supposed to be your trump card, Pike?" McCoy is moving to stand at Kirk's left, Kirk barely even registering the doctor's presence.

Kirk's staring at his cuticles like he's bored. "It's not like you made an effort to hide it very well. Breaking into that file was easier than getting into your house undetected. And it turned out to be such a mutually beneficial arrangement for Bones and I."

McCoy shifts his weight, leaning slightly towards the table, and the drugs have fully worn off by now so Pike can see that what he thought was a set table was in fact a plastic sheet and old-fashioned surgical tools. McCoy flashes his teeth when he catches Pike staring at the scalpels. "Don't you want to know why we dropped by for a visit, Admiral?"

"I'm not taking the Enterprise away from Kirk if that's why you're here." He's not lying, either. Kirk, and definitely the two of them together, are very dangerous men who mean a lot to the empire. They're best put to use in space, far away from Pike.

"You might have noticed," McCoy's voice is a dark drawl as he reaches for the table, running his fingers over the scalpels' handles, "that Jim sees locks as an open invitation, whether it be a house or a file." Pike sees the hunger in Kirk's gaze as he watches McCoy move, and Pike feels like he should've known a long time ago how much truth there was about the two of them when they'd still been at the academy. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way; you need to decide how much you'll miss being able to walk."

Kirk leans closer to Pike, like he's going to intimate a secret. "You see, Pike, the three of us are going to talk. It would be beneficial to you to tell me everything I need to know."

"What do you want?" He asks, voice low and dry.

Kirk stands, moving to stand in front of Pike, bringing his face mere centimeters away from Pike's own. His eyes are shining in the moonlight coming in through the windows, making him look crazed, and Pike can hear McCoy moving even if he can no longer see the doctor. "I learned five years ago, when your first officer marooned me on Delta Vega, that the empire is going to fall. You're going to tell me how."